About ninety miles from Serayevo the river becomes much broader, and swollen as it was by the recent rain and snow, presented a very fine appearance.

On its right bank stands the town of Maglai, which is prettily situated in the side of a basin formed by the hills, a craggy eminence apparently dividing the town into two parts.  Behind these, however, the houses meet, sloping down close to the river’s edge.  On the very summit of the central mound is an old fort mounting five guns, which command the river, but would otherwise be of little use.  The only means of communication between either bank, is a ferry-boat of rude construction.  After leaving this town there still remained four hours of my journey to be accomplished, before arriving at Schevaleekhan, where I intended passing the night.  Unaccustomed as I was to anything like luxury, I was positively staggered at the total absence of even the commonest necessaries of life.  At Maglai I had endeavoured without success to buy potatoes, fruit, and even meat; but here neither bread, eggs, nor chickens, which are nearly always procurable, were to be found.  Having received the inevitable ‘Nehmur’ to every one of my demands, I could not help asking what the inhabitants themselves eat; and being told that they lived upon vegetables, asked for the same.  Judge, then, of my astonishment when told that there were none.  Fortunately my kind friends at Bosna Serai had not sent me away empty-handed, or assuredly I should have felt the pangs of hunger that day.

At all times a khan is a painful mockery of the word hotel, as it is often translated.  Picture to yourself a room about eight feet square, with windows not made to open, a stove which fills one-third of the entire space, and a wooden divan occupying the other two-thirds; the whole peopled by innumerable specimens of the insect creation, and you have a very fair idea of an ordinary khan.  If there be a moment when one is justified in the indulgence of a few epicurean ideas, it is when inhabiting one of these abodes of bliss.

About an hour from Schevaleekhan we crossed an arm of the Bosna by means of a ferry-boat; a little farther on the left bank stands a town of 300 houses, built very much after the same principle as Maglai.  Like that place it has an eminence, around which the houses cluster.  This is also surmounted by a fort with three guns, two small and one large.  The Mudir told me with no little satisfaction that it was the last place taken by the Turks, when they conquered Bosnia.  Profiting by my experience of the previous day, I took the precaution of buying a chicken, some bread, and a few more edibles, on my way through the town.  Provisions were, however, both scarce and execrable in quality.  Meat is indeed rarely to be obtained anywhere, as sheep are never killed, and bullocks only when superannuated and deemed unfit for further physical labour.  Chickens are consequently almost the only animal food